Bettman Calls Out Dick Pound

Gary Bettamn has finally taken the advice of Don Cherry and told Dick Pound to put up or Shut-up.TSN is reporting that Gary Bettman finally sent a letter to WADA chairman Dick Pound telling him to prove his allegations and back them up with fact. This was in response to Pound saying the he had conclusive evidence from Coaches, team doctors and players that at least 1/3 of the league is usuing performance inhancing drugs. I’m sure not many of you missed the comments made by Cherry about the subject in the first intermission of last nights game but if you did they are available on the CBC website. Here is the article from TSN.

Good for Bettman. When Pound first made his allegations, it made me furious. Not because Pound made the accusation. There could very well be players in the league that are doping for all we know. I mean, none of us are in the locker rooms. But the number he quoted was just outrageous. That is what got me angry. I’m glad that Bettman finally did this. It’s about time, and hopefully Pound can let us know exactly what was on his mind when he made that idiotic statement in the first place.

I am thinking about 75% of the reason you wrote this article is so that we could all make fun of his name. If my name is Dick Pound I would do everything possible to keep my name out of the limelight.

It’s funny cause normally if a guy has a bad name like this the media is all over it, making fun of him and whatnot. However, the name Dick Pound is soo vulgar that sportscastors and news anchors alike aren’t touching all of the potential jokes with a 20 ft pole.

Yes maybe the number of players taking sudafed is very high… But give the players a break. What if you broke your nose like 50 times and can hardly breath out of it. Not to mention this huge piece of plastic gagging you as it protects your teeth. This mouthpeice makes it really tuff to breath out of your mouth! I say, let the poor saps take sudafed – There are many many worse things one could take!

As far as steroids… No hockey player would have the will power to not retailiate when pushed around if they were taking steroids. If I was a coach in the NHL and I knew a player on the other team was jucin… I would have my players get under his skin every chance they get until he takes a undisciplined penalty from roidrage! The NHL is the only sport Steroids does not make the player better!

Actually Cherry is the one entering a debate on a subject he knows nothing about. Allegations true or not, Pound is actually an expert on performance enhancing drugs and Cherry isn’t.

Neither is Bettman.

That said, I too would like to see the “evidence”.

Anyways, you just have to think back to an interview Brian Savage and Andy Moog gave back when they were with the Habs where they both admitted not only that they did eight times a normal dose of sudafed before every game, but that many players were up to all kinds of these tricks.

Why does Bettman have to prove anything? I don’t see any hockey players dropping dead from drugs, and I don’t see any hockey players getting caught with these drugs. If the idea is funny to you, prove it. Give us some names or proof that it is a joke, and your imagination does not count.

Even Quintal said after he retired that most guys were taking suddafed or ephedrine before games…all those substances are banned at the Olympics. Quintal now suffers from arithmia, due to the drugs he took while playing. Can you say Sergei Zoltok…..??? Died of a hard attack at 30…

first off…. most of the players dont use a mouth piece since its hard to communicate with it in.

2nd…. its not hard to breath with it at all. You just open your mouth. And shockdoctor just made that new one thats like $140 where it actually makes you breath better than if you didnt have a mouthguard at all. Im sure thats what the players that do wear mouthguards use.

Even this NEW drug policy has been claimed to be useless…even before it kicks in. The NHL has been told by the US Gov. to review their policy as it does not banned many substances that are banned at the olympics, and the penalities are too soft. NHLer’s have not been known to use steroids, it’s the ephedra/suddafed that are the problem.

The NHL, like MLB, the NBA and the NFL will be imposed a new set of drug rules by the U.S. Gov. anyway, it’s only a matter of time… want it or not !

I always thought it was innocent until proven guilty. At least that’s the way most normal systems work (as do the olympics, for that matter). Betteman is doing exactly what I would have done: demanded proof.

this may be a little off topic but it still deals with drugs…who were those 2 hockey players like maybe 4 yrs ago (wasn’t in the nhl) i don’t know what league, but they would smoke weed before every game so they would be fired up or something like that, they would go crazy throwing big hits and everything ????????

Can anyone tell me anything about Matt Ellison? The Flyers just traded Patrick Sharp and Eric Meloche to the Hawks for Ellison and a pick but I don’t even know who Ellison is. I’m sure most fans who aren’t Flyer fans don’t know who Sharp is either, but I liked the way Sharp played and don’t understand trading him now for another guy that I have never heard of.

Can anyone help me out here? Someone please tell me something good about this Ellison guy so I can understand why we even did this. PLEASE!

It doesn’t matter of it’s 50 percent or 33 percent of the players doping on Sudafed or whatever. It’s Pound’s organization that has to do the proving. The fact that he said that without any direct proof was just plain irresponsible, given his position. He also neglected to mention exactly what performance enhancing drugs we’re talking about here. One would think that is a pretty obvious bit of information to mention, given the accusation. Going around just throwing accusations like that, without anything at the time to back you up, just is not the way to go around fixing things. Bettman did exactly the right thing. He’s basically telling Dick Pound how to do his job, which apparently Pound needs reminding of.

Dick Pound is a loser crying for some attention. If he wants a drug problem, he should go worry about track and feild cause you know everyone who hit’s the gym and trains can run that fast while being that big. Hockey players hit the gym just as much if not more than other athletes, and yet if you look the average NHLer is around 6 feet, 200 pounds.

Must say you guys are hilarious. This is a serious subject btw, it’s not because anyone hasn’t dropped dead “yet” that we shouldn’t act on it. And drop the names joke already, it gets boring after the first one.

The truth is that yes alot of hockey players are taking certain enhencing drugs. Be it pills or worse.

Pound did mentioned later on a radio show that after talking with doctors who treated hockey athletes it was closer to 80% but since the number was way too high he dropped it down to 30%. Which in his opinion was high enough to spark a debate but low enough for some people to think it might be possible.

They say the burden of the proof always lies on the shoulder of the accuser but I’m not so sure on this one. The NHL has said they don’t have a drug related problems for years. Baseball said the same thing. Amateur sports said the same thing. Football and Basketball is saying the same thing. There are certain amateur sports now where people using drugs is a given. We all know how it is in Baseball. Would it be surprising if we found out that a big portion of Hockey, football and Basketball players take some kind of drugs? Sure the drugs differ from sports to sports but it’s basically the same thing.

In amateur sports, depending of which sports we talk about, it’S sometimes close to 20% of the athletes who get caught cheating. Of course this doesn’t take into account the numbers of athlete who use the latest drug technology that is completely invisible to those test.

Hockey is supposed to test every players at least twice a year, at random. How come we still haven’t heard of any test?

Let’s not forget also of course the crazy schedule, where some teams plays almost 9 games in 15 days. The human body is simply not made to take that kind of punishment, no matter how well trained you are. Some players can do it better then other, but most simply can’t. This is where pills like “sudafed” and “wake up” and other things like that comes in. These pills will gve you the required energy boost to go trough these phase, especially at the end of the season or in the playoff.

Last but not least arguments of course is money. Take your typical NHLers, if he plays 4 years he’s lucky. Many won’t even stay that long. Now this guy isn’t that bad, he can score 5 goals a season and maybe get 5 pass. Defensively he’s alright but nothing spectacular. he’s payed the league’s minimum trough all his career then retire. Now if he takes these pills, he might be able to play 2 or even 3 more years. We are talking about over a million dollar, ( 475k x3 = 1.425million ). Plus, he might actually manage to have one or 2 season where he get 10 goals and over 15 passes. which should raise his salary for quite a bit. Was it worth it? in the end I guess it did, especially if the drugs is invisible to the few “tests” the league asked for..

But is it worth it? of course not. Addiction, lack of sleep, nausea, troubled stomach, heart related problems and many, many more side effects will follow you for the rest of your life. Not only that, but by using these things you always set the bar higher and higher, which mean that the next generation has to take something stronger or at least the same thing if they want to get in the NHL.

At this point I’m just rambling, but I’m very disapointed at how the hockey world reacted to this. You’d think it would spark a debate, you’d think people would try to prove it’s simply not true. But instead people are simply sitting on their asses saying it’s “impossible” and asking Pound to “prove his numbers”. Hell, if Hockey is so clean, why not outright ban players who get caught. Why not prove to the world how clean and perfect we are, I mean it could be a good marketing move no? “See the Superman who are real drug-free man” or something…

THC, the active narcotic in marijuana, is a depressant, not a stimulant. It also inhibits motor response and affects co-ordination negatively. Just great for getting off those one-timers from the slot.

Pound didn’t say that 1/3 of hockey players use steroids or illegal substances. He said that 1/3 of the NHL players were taking performance enhancing substances. Red Bull could be considered a performance enhancing substance. Is that illegal under IIHF rules? IOC rules? Does WADA test for elevated levels of caffeine? There were many players in the 70s and 80s who would drink three or four cups of coffee before games, and more between periods. In fact, Glen Sather once sent decaf to the visitors dressing room during a playoff series.

I think he made the statement more to get some attention on the subject and less to point a finger at the NHL. Unfortunately, it may not have worked as he’d intended,

Ok for a guy who refers to assists as passes, well you clearly show you don’t really know anything about hockey. As for that jackass Pound, well he use to be a big shot at the olympics but lately has disappeared. Now he decides he needs some attention, and that is all this is, a plea for attention. Out of all the olympic games we have had, how many hockey players tested positive? Compare that to how many track and feild athletes, swimmers. rowers, boxers, wrestlers, and all the other sports. I’m sure you will find it is one of the lowest. If Pound wants to go fix a problem, he should worry about the sports where it is “absolutely clear” that alot of the athletes are on something.

Also didn’t Pound’s WADA group want to take the gold medal away from the Canadian snowboarder cause he tested positive for weed and they consider that a “performance enhancing drug”. That right there shows that they are all idiots. The only way weed improved his performance is if at the time he was at the starting get he looked down and saw a 20 FOOT TWINKE at the end of the run.

I figured it all out, do you all remember when Pound, WADA and the IOC wanted to take the gold medal away from the Canadian snowboarder cause he tested positive for weed. They considered weed a “performance enhancer”. Which by the way shows how stupid they all truely are. The only way weed enhanced his performance is if he looked down from the starting gate and saw a 20 FOOT TWINKE at the end of the run.

Since we are taking steps to legalize weed in Canada, maybe he thinks all the Canadian players are getting high, and apparently they consider that a performance enhancer.

Heh, I don’t know hockey because I refered to assists as passes. Well sorry if I had a small slip and used the french word there instead of the english one. Yet you still understood me don’t you? so what’s the point in even trying to prove that.

Again, the elite are rarely the one who use drugs, but I bet you knew that uh? The only reasons they considered weed as a “performance enhancing drugs” is that in order to ban it they had to. Simple as that. Any athlete who took any kind of drugs shouldn’t be participating and that’s final.

Btw, what’s the difference between amateur and proffesional sports? Oh yeah, in proffessional sports, they haven’t even tested anyone on a regular basis yet. I’d say that help in never finding anything don’t you think?